


Panic Cord

by Enterprisingly



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Angst, M/M, Romance, figuring it out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2015-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-26 02:08:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4985917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enterprisingly/pseuds/Enterprisingly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is nothing <em>wrong</em> with their relationship – or Roy himself – and perhaps that is the problem. For Ed is so very used to being in mortal peril, constantly playing a game of catch-as-catch-can with death. The sudden stillness of civilian life and a happy relationship does not settle easily on his shoulders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Panic Cord

**Author's Note:**

> I've been writing a lot of humor recently and I felt the old itch to write something a little heavier.
> 
> Unbeta'd please let me know if you catch anything.
> 
> This fic has a recommended soundtrack of songs that inspired it: Gabrielle Aplin's "Panic Cord" and "Letting You Go", Marina and The Diamonds' "I'm a Ruin", and Florence + the Machine's "Long and Lost".

> _"Maybe you were just too nice to me,_
> 
> _maybe it took me way too long to leave,_
> 
> _maybe once we felt the same,_
> 
> _maybe I'm the one to blame."_
> 
> _\- Gabrielle Aplin, Panic Cord_

* * *

Ed leaves Roy because he does not know what else to do.

There is nothing _wrong_ with their relationship – or Roy himself – and perhaps that is the problem. For Ed is so very used to being in mortal peril, constantly playing a game of catch-as-catch-can with death. The sudden stillness of civilian life and a happy relationship does not settle easily on his shoulders.

Roy is attentive, and caring, and always willing to bend to suit Ed’s whims. And Ed is so tired of feeling like he is living his life waiting for the dam to break, waiting for Roy to grow tired of doting on him, of staring at him like he hung the moon, of _loving_ him like Ed is one of the pillars upon which his whole world sits.

Ed knows with certainty that while he could never do better than Roy, Roy can do far better than him.

And one day he will.

So he spends all of his spare time wondering when the shine will wear off and Roy will look down to see not the fantasy version of Ed who is worth doing those things for, but the real Ed. The one who has lost the thing that made him extraordinary and these days is covered in more scar tissue than unmarked flesh.

The other thing that chafes at him is the fact that he has a _home_ now. A House. A place where he has put down ties and weighed anchor. A place that he returns to over and over. His boots are by the door, his books are on the shelves, his clothing lives in dresser drawers instead of a traveling case.

He has never had a home since the day that he and Al burned theirs to the ground, that is, until Roy had opened his up to Ed.

But Ed doesn’t know what to do with routines or domesticity. He does not know how to live without fighting for the right to draw every breath. He does not know how he will survive when the time comes that he must give this refuge up as well, along with Roy’s affection.

The fear rises like a tidal wave within him, a cacophony of disquiet and displeasure, a thousand voices all screaming that he cannot get comfortable with this because it cannot last forever. And one day, when the noise in his head grows too loud and he feels the walls of their cheerful house closing in around him, Ed pulls his old traveling case down, packs his things, and leaves.

He barely even pauses to say goodbye.

When Roy demands – in a voice that breaks and with eyes that _shine_ just a little too much for Ed’s comfort – to know why he is leaving, Ed looks away, unable to speak.

“Just tell me that you do not love me any more. Tell me that’s why you have to go and I’ll let you leave,” Roy says, frustration and yearning bleeding into his words, “But you cannot walk away from me in silence Edward, that is too cruel.”

The older man’s fists, covered as always in his white gloves, are clenched by his side. And though Roy stands, as ever, straight and proud like the military man he is, Ed can see the fine tremors that shake his frame.

“I don’t fucking love you any more, okay? It was fun for a while but I’m bored of this,” Ed says, shrugging with nonchalance that he does not feel. It sounds like a lie, even to his own ears. He can’t look into Roy’s eyes. If he does the older man will see the truth, call his bluff.

Roy will make him stay.

But Ed does not let their gazes meet and Roy doesn’t even debate it. He doesn’t fight it. He just goes limp, as if he’s been shot and folds like a house of cards.

“Alright,” Roy says, and that is it.

He does as promised and lets Ed walk away.

When he steps out and slams the door behind him, Ed feels like he’s breathing air that is too thin. Like he’s jumping off a cliff. Like he’s burning himself alive and on purpose.

 _It is for the best_ , he thinks as he walks down the street, footsteps echoing off the cobblestones. Of that he is certain. Of that he _must_ be certain. If he is not… no. He cannot think about it.

This year has been great and isn’t it better for everything to end while it’s all still a happy memory? What good would it do to wait until everything fell to ruin and they learned to hate each other?

As it is, he and Roy will hurt for a bit, but they will heal. But if Ed waits for the day when Roy decides they’re through, he knows for a fact that he will not survive. Because something this good _can’t_ last.

So Ed leaves and he just… goes. He goes now because he’s afraid that if he does not, he never will.

* * *

He spends two years in Xing. And one in Creta. Seven months in Ishval. He manages about three weeks in Drachma before the cold chases him south again to Aerugo where he remains, soaking up the sunlight and tinkering with one research project after another, for almost fifteen months. He does not set foot in Amestris except aboard trains bound for other places, for a very long time.

Every month or so, someone will track down his current address with enough accuracy to actually get mail to him and a package will arrive with missives from Al and Winry, from Pinako, from Ling, from Riza and the rest of the military men.

And then, after the first year, which holds only silence from his former lover, he begins to get them from Roy too.

Ed is always happy to hear from his friends and family, to learn of his new niece and then his new nephew, to hear about the success of the efforts being made to rebuild the country, and to change it for the better.

But Roy’s letters… oh they leave him aching, and lost, and so very confused.

 _My Dearest Edward_ , the first one begins. There is no anger, no judgment, none of the rage or hurt that Ed had expected to find within when he finally forced himself to stop shaking and open the letter.

Instead the letter speaks about the day to day of Roy’s life, the projects that he’s getting to around the house, the people at work, and the work itself. It sounds like the conversations that he and Roy used to share over the dinner table, or in the sitting room. It is so mundane, as though nothing has changed and Ed is just on a long vacation, and Roy is expecting him to return home any day now.

Ed wonders, at first, if perhaps something has happened to Roy, if he has suffered some trauma that caused him to lose his memories. But when he writes to Hawkeye to check, she tells him that it’s nothing of the sort and won’t say any more.

_They promoted me to Major General last month and there was a great deal of pomp and circumstance. You would have hated all of the parties and official receptions. I would have enjoyed seeing you in a suit for once, but it is probably for the best that you were not forced to attend as I know that you do not hold with formality._

He thinks about replying but he does not know what to say. The letter is tucked away into the bottom of Ed’s traveling case and remains unanswered.

The letters that follow, despite Ed’s lack of a response to the first one, are much in the same vein. Though, as time wears on, Roy’s mask, the one that he somehow wears even on paper, slips a little until the day that Ed finds himself sitting in a piazza in Aerugo, biting the skin of his knuckle hard to keep from crying.

_I have missed you greatly in this last year. The house is far too quiet without the sound of your footsteps pacing back and forth while you try to puzzle out the mysteries of the universe, and our bed is both too large and too cold._

_I know I said that I would let you go and I meant it. I still mean it. But I cannot help but feel that I was perhaps wrong, that I should have fought harder that– well. It’s too late for that now._

The letter in his hands, despite never saying it outright, speaks of bleeding heartache and loneliness, deep resignation to the fate of a sad bachelor who will remain married to his work because the only thing that could have pulled him free has long since left him behind.

Ed feels the pull in his heart, the inexorable tug back to the man who had been a safe harbor for his soul. But he fights it. Because a harbor is only safe until the storm comes and then it too can be blasted clean off the map.

Each letter is signed ‘ _Yours always, Roy_ ’

Ed keeps every single one and never writes back. Eventually, the letters decrease in frequency until they stop coming altogether.

There’s a hole in Ed’s heart – and it’s so much deeper and darker than he could have fathomed – that began tearing the day he walked away from Roy. And nothing he does, nothing he sees, or learns, or experiences will make it close. The day the his mail bundle comes and does not contain a letter from Roy for the fifth time in as many months, the hole rips open into an aching chasm that bleeds and bleeds and _bleeds_.

The fear that he made the greatest mistake in the world by leaving Roy behind grows, gnawing at Ed’s heart like a wild dog with a bone.

Then one day he wakes up, feeling old and sad and so very, _very_ cold despite the heat of the Aerugoan summer. He gets to his feet and leans on the wash basin. Ed looks at his face in the mirror – thinned and sculpted by age and exhaustion – and the stack of letters in his open suitcase.

And all he wants in the whole wide world is to be held by Roy one more time. For all his searching, he has found nothing that could hold his focus half as tightly or his body with a fraction of as much tenderness.

He wants it so badly that he no longer cares what the consequences are. Ed left to protect himself and instead, all he has done is wander aimlessly across the world, aching and longing, and wishing for the one thing that he threw away on purpose.

Ed books his ticket home that afternoon and spends the next week and a half sitting in a train car, trying not to think about what he will find when the locomotive reaches its destination. He does not call ahead to tell anyone he’s coming.

* * *

When he finally returns to Central, he feels like he has fallen sideways, slipping through the walls of reality into another world where everything is the same, but is also really, _really_ not.

Like a compass needle being pulled north, his feet carry him by force of habit, from the train station to the front door of the home that he had laid claim to for just shy of a year. Ed stands outside in the gathering darkness, illuminated by a pool of golden streetlight, looking at what is both familiar and strange.

There are lights on in the windows. Roy is very likely home right now, separated from Ed by nothing more than a few walls. After all he was always very protective of his time spent reading and lounging before a fire after a long day at the office and Ed would be willing to bet that has not changed in his absence.

The house is almost exactly as he left it. Roy has had some landscaping done, but little else has changed.

Ed wants, more than anything, to let his feet take him the rest of the way, up the front steps to the door. Let his hands turn the key – that he carries still in his pocket – in the lock, just to see if it still works. To see if Roy truly meant the words that he wrote at the end of each of his letters.

But fear sticks his feet to the ground like glue and he _cannot_ move.

What if things are different since the last time that Roy sent a letter? It has been close to six months now since the last message and that is a long enough time for things to have changed.

What if Roy has found someone else at long last?

What if he is too hurt, to angry with Ed to let him back in?

What if he has simply given up?

There is a flicker of motion in one of the windows and Ed starts. He is caught, unable to move, unable to decide what he wants, what he needs and so he just stands there and lets fate decide for him.

The front door of the house flies open and there is Roy. Roy who is dressed in his civilian slacks and a white shirt, Roy who is not wearing shoes, Roy who is all but sprinting down the front path towards Ed like a man possessed.

The traveling case slips free of Ed’s fingers and falls to the ground just in time for the older man to draw even with him. Ed has a fraction of a second to look into Roy’s dark eyes before he is being engulfed in an embrace that knocks the wind from his chest.

Roy wraps Ed in strong arms that pull him close, hold him tightly. Tentatively he lets his own arms come up to wrap around Roy’s back in turn. They stand, locked together in the pool of streetlight, for a very long time, not saying anything.

When finally the contact – so much after _nothing_ for years – becomes too much for Ed, he squirms free and pulls back. At last he gets a proper look at Roy for the first time since he left.

There is grey at his temples now, and there are new lines – that are definitely not from laughing – at the corners of his eyes and between his brows. He looks worn and older in a way that Ed is sort of surprised by because Roy had always seemed so ageless before. But he is no less handsome than he was on the day that Ed left.

“You came back,” Roy says, so softly, as though he’s afraid that if he speaks too loudly Ed will bolt.

“I… yeah,” Ed says, looking at the ground.

“Is this… to stay or are you just passing through?” The question sounds like it _hurts_ Roy to ask and Ed feels something crumble inside of him.

“Do you want me to stay? I thought… maybe you might have found someone else when you stopped writing,” Ed scuffs his boot against the cobblestones.

“ _Never_ ,” Roy says and there is such force behind the word that Ed actually looks up in surprise, “The only reason that I stopped writing is that when you were silent for so long, I thought that perhaps you wished me to leave you in peace. So I made my own with the notion of a new level of solitude and tried to give you the space I assumed that you desired.”

“I never knew what to say. You wrote to me like we had never stopped being… whatever we were. And I… didn’t know how to feel about that.”

Ed studies Roy’s face, trying to understand what he is seeing there. He had expected anger, but instead there is nothing but naked longing, tentative, hope, and also the lurking shadow of fear. As though Roy is terrified that this will all end with Ed vanishing again. Then Roy’s face shutters and Ed finds himself looking at Major General Mustang instead of Roy.

“Had you ever told me to stop I would have. But we both know that when you left you were not exactly honest about why you were going. I could not stop you but that does not mean that I had to believe you,” Mustang says.

Anxiety grabs Ed by the heart and squeezes. Roy’s face softens a little once more.

“Edward, I have waited Seventeen Hundred Ninety-Six days for you to come home and the only thing I wish to do at this moment is to take your hand and lead you inside. To climb into bed with you and _hold_ you until I am certain that you are real and not a hallucination brought on by nearly five years of missing you. But I have loved your ghost for far longer than I was actually allowed to love you. I will not– I _cannot_ do this again unless you mean to stay.”

“How can you still want me?” The question tears itself from Ed’s lips before he can stop it, “How can you still say you love me after I left you like that? After I never wrote you back?”

Roy’s eyes drift skyward. “Love is not rational, nor is it kind. I tried to hate you. Really, I made every effort to replace the longing with anger,” His gaze drops to meet Ed’s once more. “But you shine too brightly, Edward; the year we had was the best of my entire sorry life. How could I do anything but love you?”

Ed makes a choked, broken sound in the back of his throat and reaches out to grab the front Roy’s shirt. He hauls him forwards so that he can kiss Roy. Their lips meet at the wrong angle, their teeth click painfully.They are both out of practice and out of synch with each other.

It does not matter.

“I’m staying, I’m staying,” Ed says against Roy’s lips repeating the words over and over until they are swallowed up by the other man’s kiss.

In the end, Roy does take Ed’s hand and leads him inside the house. And when they crash together in a tangle of naked limbs and frantic energy, there is a new edge to the way they handle one another, something that swirls amongst the joy and relief of touching each other once more. It feels like sorrow and little bitterness over the lost years and the silence and the hurt.

* * *

Their relationship is different now. Ed loves Roy as surely as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. And Roy would devote himself to the cause of making Ed happy for the rest of his life at the cost of everything else, if Ed so much as asked.

But there are shadows and place where they do not fit so perfectly together now. They catch on each other and when they fight it is like the early days, back before they had any idea that they would ever be anything other than ‘Fullmetal’ and ‘the Bastard’.

And Ed feels a knot in his chest ease. Because this, _this_ he can understand. _This_ feels like pulling on an old coat, warm and comfortable and torn and mended and perhaps just a little short in the sleeves because he has grown and changed. But that is good, that is right. Everything is as it should be.

What they had before was too perfect, too pure to last. What he has now with Roy, has been broken and mended. It is a love that has proven itself against the odds. It feels right.

As Roy’s even breathing tickles the fine hairs at the back of his neck and Ed lays once again in the circle of his arms where he has always belonged, he knows that he has found what he is looking for.

Ed has come home at last and he will not run away again.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this story please let me know! Comments and kudos are both appreciated.


End file.
